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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23172223">Steve.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lanyonn/pseuds/Lanyonn'>Lanyonn</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Break Up, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 14:21:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,501</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23172223</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lanyonn/pseuds/Lanyonn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve watches Bucky leave him for someone else. This is not a nice story.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes &amp; Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Original Character(s), James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Steve.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Steve sees Bucky at thirty past four in the afternoon and he’s with the other guy - the guy he left him for. He’s taller and more built than Steve but just as blonde and Steve feels like <em> shit </em> . He wishes he had a word more powerful to describe the guy than “shit” but his brain has stopped working a long time ago. He remembers their fights. That guy from your culinary school, Steve had said. He’s too close to you. Bucky had laughed at first. What? No. We’re just friends. I love <em> you </em> and I’m dating <em> you </em> . Hell, we’re <em> living </em> together. And Steve had thought that if there was a sure way to lose someone, it was by being a clingy boyfriend. There wasn’t that big an age difference between them. Steve had turned thirty-one before Christmas and Bucky was going to be thirty-three in March. Bucky thought he’d never go back to school again and told Steve that he’d never have been able to do that if Steve hadn’t been so supportive of him.</p><p> </p><p>And now, Bucky is dating that guy from his school.</p><p> </p><p>A younger guy, bigger, more muscular, cuter, sweeter, blonde hair like Steve’s and clear blue eyes. But younger and unlike Steve, he is clean shaven and makes Bucky <em> laugh </em>.</p><p> </p><p>Steve feels like he’s never made Bucky <em> laugh </em>.</p><p> </p><p>The first time Steve saw Bucky with the other guy, he felt older. Greyer. Like he was hitting a middle age crisis with a younger boyfriend even though he was neither middle aged nor did have a younger boyfriend. Steve felt terribly jealous but he was a thirty year old with his fair share of relationships and heartbreak and he trusted and loved Bucky. And he was so <em> sure </em>that Bucky loved him. No one else but him. He showered with Bucky and soaked in the bathtub with him. He licked honey off Bucky’s stomach and they had adopted a cat together.</p><p> </p><p>Bucky had taken the cat when he left and Steve still found stray white cat hair on his suits.</p><p> </p><p>Steve wants to say that it has only been twenty hours since Bucky left him. But it hasn’t. It has been days. Weeks. Maybe months. Steve will never know.</p><p> </p><p>He remembers going over to visit Bucky’s school as a “surprise” and Bucky visibly brightening up like he was the best thing Bucky had seen all day and hugging him with no qualms in front of his friends, even coyly playing with Steve’s collar and leaving a kiss underneath his jaw. The blonde guy had been watching them, happy, handsome, younger.</p><p> </p><p>Steve doesn’t know why he didn’t catch onto anything then or if there had been something to catch onto.</p><p> </p><p>Bucky hasn’t left anything behind, not even a memory. No forgotten t-shirt in the laundry or even one of his many combs. Steve has never smelt another man on him but is that real? Is that how it really happens? Do people smell their partners cheating? Was Bucky cheating on him?</p><p> </p><p>Bucky didn’t give any answers. We can’t be together anymore. I can’t deal with you anymore. I need time away from you. We’re not breaking up, but I can’t be here anymore.</p><p> </p><p>Steve didn’t see why he had to take all his things away if they were not breaking up. I just don’t want to be around you, Bucky had said. You’re suffocating me.</p><p> </p><p>The first summer after they started dating, Bucky would complain Steve didn’t hug him enough even though it was hitting forty something outside. Steve didn’t know how he could be suffocating Bucky in the cold of winter.</p><p> </p><p>I just can’t, Bucky said, as if that was going to explain everything. And then Steve had snapped. Again. Because all Steve seemed to do lately was snap. Snap at Bucky. Snap at the cat. Snap at everything. They didn’t even like him at work anymore.</p><p> </p><p>I’m sorry, I just feel like I’m losing you, Steve had apologised for everything he had said to Bucky. I’m so scared of losing you. You’re not losing me, Bucky had told him. I just need some time away.</p><p> </p><p>And Steve had said, okay. They’d do it Bucky’s way. Take some time off from each other.</p><p> </p><p>And then he sees him with <em> that </em> guy. Steve isn’t even trying to be in Bucky’s way. He feels incapable of going to work and there is no food in the house so he drags himself to the mart to buy every flavour of instant cup noodles he can find when he sees Bucky with <em> that </em> guy. The blonde. Younger. Taller. And he turns away. He doesn’t want to think about it. He has no right. They are just <em> friends </em>, Bucky had told him. Bucky needs his friends, staying away from Steve must be hard on Bucky, too.</p><p> </p><p>Steve tries not to leave the aisle first because Bucky and his <em> friend </em>are going to see him if he does. He stares blankly at the wall clock as he tosses in things in his cart that he’s not even sure about. Baby shampoo. Double sided tape. Takes them out. Puts them back. He’s aching to hear them leave.</p><p> </p><p>He turns a corner and quickly wheels his way into another aisle. They still haven’t noticed him because they are kissing in the checkout line.</p><p> </p><p>Steve returns to the apartment he used to share with Bucky with two armfuls of things he’s not even sure when or why he bought.</p><p> </p><p>He isn’t even able to make it home.</p><p> </p><p>Steve sits down on the curb, putting down the packages in his hand, a little tub full of safety pins jumps out as he puts down the package in his right hand. He can’t remember even using a safety pin ever in his life. Like a man out of his body, he realises he wants to cry. Like realising that Alpine wants a petting or that Bucky wants a snack. Steve wants a good cry. But who’ll give it to him? It’s something that has to be given by someone and no one is willing to give Steve a good cry. Because there is no one. Steve is alone. And he’s on his own.</p><p> </p><p>He’s not sure how long he sits there, getting in the way of the few people that do pass by on this road. It’s mostly empty on the roads these days. He can’t remember why.</p><p> </p><p>When his muscles are too cold to move, his legs too heavy for feeling, Steve gets up again and makes his way back to his house.</p><p> </p><p>He remembers the whole muddle that had resulted in him getting this apartment together with Bucky. It feels like something that had happened a lifetime ago. To another Steve. In another universe. They say there are infinite parallel universes, he recalls. Some documentary he saw on YouTube because Steve remembers jackshit from school. </p><p> </p><p>He is not sure where he puts his purchases but he doesn’t turn the lights on as he lays down on the cold floor. He can’t make it any further than this and the floor is as safe and cold and lonely as anywhere else in the house.</p><p> </p><p>He can’t get the image of them kissing out of his head. Give me a few days, a week, Bucky had said. We need some space. I need some space. You know I love you. Can’t you do this for me? For us?</p><p> </p><p>He’d said it was for <em> them </em> . Steve had thought ‘them’ meant Bucky and him. But it hadn’t. <em> Them </em>.</p><p> </p><p>It’s some time later. Maybe it has been a day, or a week like Bucky had wanted. Or maybe it has been a month already. Or maybe it has just been a minute. Time works in funny ways even if you give it names. It is later, though, after Bucky has gone and Steve realises that he has left to never come back.</p><p> </p><p>“Hi,” he writes to him. “I don’t think you should come back.”</p><p> </p><p>It feels like a weak shot. Bucky has taken everything, even Alpine, who they adopted <em> together </em>. He already knew that Bucky wasn’t coming back. He didn’t have to see Bucky kissing the other guy in the check out line in the mart as if it was the happiest kiss of Bucky’s life to know that Bucky wasn’t coming back.</p><p> </p><p>But with this last note, he feels that he can tell Bucky to… to… fuck the hell off.</p><p> </p><p>He stares at his phone for the longest time. Maybe Bucky will call him back, he thinks. He’ll want to know why Steve told him to not come back. He checks the messages even when the phone doesn’t buzz and he keeps the lights in the room off so that he can see the blinking of any notification even with his eyes closed.</p><p> </p><p>Bucky doesn’t text him back.</p><p> </p><p>And Steve knows he’s gone in ways he’ll never have him back even if he was holding him in his arms again.</p><p> </p><p><b>Finis</b>.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'm sorry.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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